Ireland's toothless Celtic tiger

As a blind person growing up in Ireland, Martin Conway went through the mainstream education system. He has also run his own business and is now a county councillor. Here he talks about the parlous state of disability politics among our nearest neighbours

The total population of Ireland is around four million. The standard figure given in terms of numbers of disabled people is around five per cent. That means there are around 250,000 of us.

Until recently most of the population lived in rural areas, but now it’s more like 50 per cent living in urban areas and the other 50 per cent living in small towns and the country.

Anti-discrimination legislation here is not as strong as in somewhere like the United States. There’s been a lot of difficulty in getting legislation which is acceptable both to the communities representing disabled people and the Government. There was a genuine attempt made a few years ago, but that fell on its face largely because agreement couldn’t be reached among the various disability groups. So there’s nothing like the Disability Discrimination Act in the UK.

The main problem is that the lobby in Ireland is very fragmented. Unfortunately you have a significant number of advocacy groups representing a whole spectrum of disabilities and you also have the service providers, groups which were set up because they wanted to do good work.

It’s estimated that in Ireland we have around 600 groups representing disabled people. 200 of those would be service providers and they’re scattered all over Ireland. They’re given funding because basically they’re doing work which should be done by the Government.

You also have 400 groups involved in advocacy. A lot of them also receive state support, but that’s part of the problem.

We need a much more streamlined advocacy and representative sector in this country.

There’s a lot of competition among the existing groups for funding, for members and in terms of wanting to exert influence. So they’re competing with each other instead of working together.

There’s a lot of tension among disabled people in this country anyway. That’s meant that further splinter groups have been set up. That then empowers other people to have more of an influence on policy. A lot of those 400 organisations would have chief executives and other paid staff and not all of those chief executives and staff are themselves disabled people. So there are, in my view, people who have made a career out of disability without having any sort of disability themselves.

Irish people are quite political and disabled Irish people are quite political as well. But so far, we’ve lacked a leader who earned or pulled in the respect of disabled people.

One thing which we need to help tackle this problem is government leadership, for them to say, ‘Listen, we’re not providing funding for 600 organisations, you need to come together, have some sort of a forum and just reduce the numbers’.

There’s a billion Euros a year made available to NGOs in the disability sector. That’s a significant amount of money, but you can see how much of it goes on administration instead of helping service users and doing real advocacy work.

I believed in my younger days that leaders would emerge from those bodies who would affect change. That didn’t happen. The reason that it didn’t happen, certainly in the last 15 years, is that the Government threw money at every problem because they had lots of it. Probably the reason the Government treated it as just another issue is that there wasn’t anyone with a disability elected to public office.

That’s where I come in. I’m the only county councillor, the only local authority member in Ireland who is disabled. I’m now seeking to run for the national parliament. My party is almost inevitably going to be the leading party in the next parliament. When that happens, and if I’m elected to the Dáil, I would hope to major on the disability issue. I think then that it would be incumbent on me to take a leadership role in sorting out what I call the disability myths in Ireland, ensuring that disabled people’s voices are heard and that proper structures are put in place and money is put to best use.

While there is the makings of a disability movement in Ireland, it’s not as effective as it could be and it’s certainly not as effective as it should be. There are some good people within the movement, very well motivated, very bright, but again they’re splintered and fragmented all over the place and that is reducing their effectiveness.

With respect to how disabled people are viewed by the rest of the population, it’s come a long way. There is an acceptance now. Ireland previously had a very catholic ethos where disabled people were seen as needing to be minded and pitied. Now we’ve moved almost full circle and we’re very much a secular society where people are respected in their own right. We’re a far more educated society and that has brought a new common thread of attitudes.

The Celtic tiger years certainly opened up opportunities for disabled people to show that we could do jobs, but now, with unemployment running at ten per cent, the problem isn’t persuading people to employ us, it’s about a lack of job availability.

• Martin Conway was talking to Ian Macrae.